Toddlers and Torchwood

I had a fairly productive weekend.  Right now, I'm a bit stressed because I'm neck-deep in a semi-crisis at my agency.  It's a combination of typically high turnover and terrible communication practices by social workers.  Perhaps they practice keeping secrets so much that they forget how to actually tell important things to large groups of people.  I don't talk about my job here, but I will say that I have a bit of experience when it comes to the psychology of communication about change.  You really should not have the junior-most person in the organization sending stakeholders a mass email saying "I'm leaving and everything is changing, but I won't say exactly how, I'll just let you the reader fill in the blanks with the worst-case scenario, but don't worry, nothing will really change."

On the bright side, we finally have a subsidy and reimbursement amount for BB, which means a presentation date can be scheduled soon. I'm happy with the amount. I'm going to regard this as a solid enough milestone to go ahead and buy some general parenting books on toddlers.  I'm especially worried about attachment issues.  I remember reading "Toddler Adoption" a while back, but I need to go dig it up again. 

I've also been watching a lot of Torchwood lately.  It was added to the Netflix Watch Instantly list, and I thought I'd give it a try.  The only thing I knew was that it was a Doctor Who spin-off with more adult subject matter. IT. IS. SO. FREAKING. GOOD.  I'm not typically the kind of person who falls in love with TV shows.  I mean, I like exciting, character-driven, well-written shows like Buffy and Angel and The Wire and Six Feet Under and Big Love and Battlestar Galactica (yes, I cried at the end even though the end was kind of stupid) and so on. But I can't recall a TV show that hooked me in as quickly as Torchwood!  It's like television crack, and I'm totally addicted. Now I'm listening to Torchwood radio plays and buying Torchwood books along with the toddler books.

Here's why.  I'll get the bad stuff on the table right away.  The series starts off a little unevenly.  I thought that some of the first season episodes were too sentimental.  And if you're into serious/hard science fiction (and I am) you need to suspend your disbelief.  Like Doctor Who, it's really more "science fantasy".  Especially factoring in all the time travel, there are often plot holes big enough to drive a truck through.  Much of the basic plot structure clearly comes from a kind of Buffy/Angel/X-Files secret team format.  Plus, you don't really get the full picture unless you're watching Doctor Who, and I was never a huge fan and have only sporadically watched the new Doctor Who series.
 

The good stuff: the acting is fantastic. The show takes a lot more risks than any American equivalent I can think of.  The subject matter is dark and the body count is high, so even the plots may start off as derivative, they soon get complicated.  You know where the shows start but not necessarily where they're going to end.  The characters are actually changed by what they go through and events are taken very seriously... but there's still plenty of cheeky humor.  And then there's the fact that the team is led by a heroic bisexual cosmic space slut. Captain Jack Harkness is an absolutely fantastic character.  To really get the full story on Captain Jack, you have to jump back and forth a bit between Torchwood and Doctor Who, and luckily Netflix Watch Instantly has them all available.  If you want to start from the very beginning, watch Doctor Who Series One Episodes 9-12 then start on Torchwood Series One.

I only have one episode left to watch: Children of Earth Day Five. Day Four was grueling... and heartbreaking. I knew what was going to happen, but I still cried just a little bit.

At least I know there's going to be a Season Four.  There's also a development to Americanize the show to some degree and put a version on FOX.  I'm rather leery about that.  It's not Torchwood without awesomely gratuitous gay sex, and I don't see that happening on FOX!

Right now I'm trying to get my mother to watch Torchwood too.  She's not really a sci-fi head like me, but she's much more of an Anglophile, so it shouldn't be too hard.  She thinks anything from the BBC is brilliant.  I've argued with her before that there are just as many crappy shows in the UK, it's just that they only export the best of them.  And even those are frequently fishy.  For every "Father Ted" there's an "Are You Being Served". I think my husband is probably a lost cause, though.  His favorite BBC show is "Lovejoy".